Administrative Holiday

It's that day again - "where does the time go?", you might well ask.

Of course, just what the meaning of this day depends on the beholder. Here in the noble city of Louisville, this is Oaks Day, which means it's Churchill Downs' annual Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbred fillies. But more importantly, it means an excuse to have a pre-Derby celebration and start drinkin' early. Many workplaces and even schools take off for Oaks Day, but no one declares that the holiday is explicitly because of the Oaks, of course - most simply say it is an "administrative holiday."

For others, April 30 means Walpurgis Night (Walpurgisnacht). It's a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated by Christian as well as non-Christian communities, past the stroke of midnight and through "The Door Into Summer" - May Day, the beginning of the new season. It's probably the one day of the year that Catholics, pagans, witches, Satanists, and anarchists all almost see eye-to-eye.

Walpurgisnacht is named for Saint Walpurga. The earliest representation of Walpurga, from the early 11th century, depicts her holding stylized stalks of grain. The grain attribute has been interpreted as identifying Walpurga as a Christianized protectress of the grain, the Grain Mother. Farmers fashioned her image in a corn dolly at harvest time, and from this tradition also comes the real origin of the Scarecrow figure in the fields - scaring birds was never its original intention.

Bloated Cow Syndrome

Saw a headline online that said: "Lush Kentucky pastures causing bloat problem". Needless to say, I had to click on that. And I learned something today.

Evidently "frothy bloat" is a major problem in the bovine industry, and recent grazing conditions in Kentucky have been ideal for the condition. The article says frothy bloat is distinctly different from gaseous bloat, which happens more often when cattle are consuming grain.

Once the bloat sets in, death can occur within 1 to 4 hours. Why? How? The article explains:

“Usually frothy bloat happens when cattle are grazing forages that are high in soluble protein combined with rapid fermentation,” said Jeff Lehmkuhler, Extension beef specialist for the UK College of Agriculture. “It produces a stable foam in the rumen that blocks the normal escape of the gas from fermentation through eructation or belching.”

When the gas cannot escape, the cow’s rumen becomes distended similar to blowing up a balloon, and that can impact the animal’s ability to breathe normally because of pressure against the diaphragm, added Michelle Bilderback, UK College of Agriculture Extension veterinarian.

I was around cattle all the time on the old family farm back in Waco, and I never heard of such a thing. But a quick Google search was performed and sure enough, serious cattle farmers discussing cow bloat can be found all over the net. One heartwarming anecdote is told here with the headline "I Stabbed My Cow":

"i stabbed her hard..the whole knife blade went in..i quickly pulled it out..in about three seconds she started quieting down..the gas coming out was keeping the hole open..you could see her stomach going down..jess put a halter on her and slowly led her around..the gas kept coming out..she kept getting smaller and quieter..cathy went in and called the vet.she told him i had already stabbed her..he was amazed ..in 30 years he had never done it nor seen it done..he said all the bloated cows were dead by the time he got there."

MIssing Plane in Hazard Area

From the Associated Press:

HAZARD, Ky. -- Kentucky State Police are searching an area in eastern Kentucky for a plane that may be missing.

Trooper Jody Sims at the Hazard post says officials have spotted something that could be wreckage and are investigating whether it's related to a report of a plane possibly missing.

Trooper Tony Watts says the Federal Aviation Administration in Indianapolis notified police Tuesday afternoon that a plane may have been lost in the vicinity of Clay, Owsley and Leslie counties.

Rescuers are searching the area, but Watts says they can't get an aircraft in the air to help look because of the weather.

Solar Bag Creates UFO Scare

A number of people saw an unidentified flying object over the city of Berea a few days ago. Thanks to the spooky goings-on at the Depot, weird things in the skies aren't that big a deal, but this time one of the puzzled witnesses was none other than Scott Powell, editor of the Berea Citizen.

Powell and his neighbors watched the strange wiggling, undulating UFO for about 10 minutes. Channel 18 News quoted him as saying, "It looked like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis had come up and was flying in the air, because it had that arch shape to it and it was kind of a metallic - it had a shine to it."

As it turned out, the tubular floater wasn't an alien nor a cruise missile and it wasn't even a secret government project. It was merely a giant 50-foot-long solar bag that a local schoolteacher had released into the air as part of a class demonstration of solar energy. Solar bags act like helium balloons (some have risen to over 120,000 feet) but are filled with nothing but ordinary air, heated via convection by the sun's rays.

Yahweh's Philadelphia Remnant Assembly

Whilst making my meandering rounds on the net today, I stumbled across a curious religious site called TNT 777, or "Tomorrow's News - Today". (Are they Early Edition fans?)

Operating from a P.O. box in Bowling Green, this group is called "Yahweh's Philadelphia Remnant Assembly", and their mission statement reads:

"We preach and teach the Gospel/Good News of the soon-coming Kingdom of Yahweh to be established here on this earth ruled by his glorified Son, Yahshua the Anointed One."

They publish newsletters with such thought-provoking articles as "Syncretism: A Deadly Mix" and "Leviticus 23 or Dehioth 1-4?", but after reading them all online, I still have no clear picture of just what it is these people believe (Their "Our Beliefs" page has evidently been under construction for years).


But I did note passing references to Herbert W. Armstrong, the founder of the Worldwide Church of God. You'd think that would be something of a lamp unto my feet to learn more about this "Yahweh's Philadelphia Remnant Assembly", but not so. Even a cursory attempt to suss it out was like wading into the LaBrea tar pits, because the Worldwide Church of God split off into many different factions after Armstrong's death. There's the Restored Church of God, the Global Church of God, the Living Church of God, the Philadelphia Church of God, the United Church of God, the Sabbath Church of God, etc. You can read more about all the post-Armstrong squabbles in Stephen Flurry's book Raising the Ruins.

But that still doesn't tell me what these folks in Bowling Green are up to, nor even what "Philadelphia Remnant" means. Even philadelphiaremnant.com doesn't explain it. Neither does satansrapture.com, but it comes closer to it - apparently it refers to one of the more puzzling passages in the Book of Revelation, about the Biblical-era Church of Philadelphia.

I dunno. It's all over my head. But it is interesting stuff.

Aquatic Bar at Al J's

The bar counter at Al J's is made of translucent glass and modified into an aqaurium, with live fish swimming around and hypnotically compelling you to have just one more Gin Rickey.


They used to have an exotic eel-like fish here - affectionately named "Whiskey" - who was very elusive despite his prodigious length; he preferred to hide under rocks and rarely came out. Used to be, you'd get a free drink if you spotted him. Sadly, he's passed on and gone to that great saloon in the sky.

Floyd's Defeat Mass Grave

This marker in Eastwood Cemetery commemorates the Kentucky pioneers killed or captured by indians in the battle that came to be known as "Floyd's Defeat". This was part of the same incident as the Long Run Massacre, in which Huron and Miami indians killed 76 settlers and soldiers during a two-day period.

The marker, which is located beside the cemetery's fence, indicates that the men are actually buried in a mass grave on the other side (see image below).


Also in Eastwood, you'll find an obelisk marking the battle site and honoring Col. John Floyd and his men, who died, as the inscription states, "in a contest with the Indians in 1781".

Kentucky Hit Hard by McAfee Mistake

After computers all over the nation started going haywire today, antivirus vendor McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update caused its antivirus program to misidentify a harmless Windows file as a virus. This prevented afflicted computers from rebooting.

The Courier-Journal reports that the Louisville Metro Police computers were especially hit hard by the unexpected glitch, as were local school systems. According to Ben Jackey, a spokesman for Jefferson County Public Schools, some employees reported their computers turning off by themselves. In Lexington, computers in City Hall went down, as well as in hospitals.

The helplessness of many organizations without computers serves to illustrate the grave danger of becoming too overdependent on them to run day-to-day operations.

The Center of Yum!

There's been much speculation about what the new Louisville downtown arena would be named, and now the wondering is over: Louisville-based Yum! Brands has become the naming sponsor for the building, which is now called - wait for it - the KFC Yum! Center.

Kind of a kooky name - rather unwieldy - but I'm sure we'll all get used to it. I predict people's habits will devolve into simply calling it either the "KFC Center" or the "Yum Center" in the end. We'll see which. (I prefer "Yum Center" myself, and without that pesky exclamation point.)

I haven't heard PETA's reaction to this turn of events yet, but something tells me there'll be no joy at vegan central tonight. I did notice some waggish Cards fan on a message board note, "When PETA throws red paint on us as we enter the KFC Yum! Center it won't matter because we'll already be wearing red!" A-hyuk.


But what I want to know is, will they be giving away free KFC on opening day in November? (Hint, hint, hint.)

Cruise Missile Over Louisville?

What the heck is it with things in the sky lately? A cylindrical UFO in Florence, a small plane full of ammo crashes in Louisville Fairgrounds, a Vietnam-era Strikemaster plane has an accident at Bowman Field, a spectacular fireball in the sky over all the midwest, plus the usual yearly air show hoopla at Thunder Over Louisville.


It's a good thing I often tend to be looking upwards anyway.

A friend and I were sitting in my back yard chillin' with some iced tea today when we noticed a plane approaching in the distance. But as it got closer, we realized it was no ordinary plane. It looked like a fairly normal long-bodied plane, but it seemed to be wingless.

As it passed low overhead it became clear that it did have two weird tiny stubby winglets protruding from the center of its sides. It also clearly had more tailfins.

After checking online, I realized that the only type of plane or rocket that fit the description of what we both saw was... a cruise missile. But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I'll be the first to admit. Where would a cruise missile be going? They're not the sort of thing one flies exhibitionally. They can't even land.


Must remember to keep my camera with me at all times. You never know what you're going to see going overhead these days.

Death of a Frappuccino

One from our Transylvania Gentlemen blog:


So I went into my usual Starbucks the other day - which lately has become the Starbucks kiosk inside the Target store at the corner of Hubbards Lane and Westport - and got my usual Venti Caramel Frappuccino.

As a longtime connoisseur of the frap, I know every little nuance in its preparation and can instantly discern when something's gone awry in the process. Something here was drastically wrong - it tasted bland and nasty, like skim milk in a colloidal suspension of dishwater. Didn't taste any coffee, didn't even feel like I'd ingested any. The texture was all wrong. The color was pale and wan.

I took it back to complain and the barista apologized, gently breaking it to me that corporate has changed the formula of the frappuccino now in order to make it an all-purpose generic drink that can be more flexible and customizable for those who prefer Soy and such. She actually agreed that the end result of the new formula is a substandard drink, but there's nothing she could do about it.

Supposedly the new fraps are healthier, using real sugar instead of HFCS. As a stalwart opponent of HFCS myself, that's applaudable, but the sweetener is clearly not the whole cause of the problem - it's the lack of the old "base" from which all fraps were made, which is now supplanted by a strictly syrup-squirting regimen. Sorry, y'all, but it's literally undrinkable, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Angry reports from my fellow disgruntled frappologists are popping up online like dandelions after a Spring rain.

Starbucks launches their new and ostensibly improved Crappuccinos in May, but because they stopped production on the old mix base, many stores are already serving the new formula without even mentioning that a shell-game switch has been pulled. I found another Starbucks in Crescent Hill that is still using the old base, and I will buy from them until they run out... and then, sadly, looks like Starbucks and I are through. I'll have to go to a local competitor's frap imitation.


It's a shame, too, because I've always been a very open and very vocal supporter of Starbucks, and I had a solo art exhibition at the Middletown Starbucks a few years back. I've always enjoyed the cognitive dissonance that my pro-Starbucks position instills among the masses of knee-jerk box-dwellers out there.

People always expect a radical hipster bohemian artiste such as myself to take the liberal position that all things corporate and huge are automatically bad. Starbucks has always been a useful tool for me to illustrate to others that if I like a product, I don't give a damn where it came from or whether it's "cool", and that I do not oppose something just because it got big and successful. Things are supposed to get big and successful.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that big companies don't sometimes make bad decisions. The people at the top clearly don't drink fraps themselves, or else their tastebuds are shot to hell, because this new formula is strictly riding that train to "New Coke" epic fail. As far as actual coffee-coffee goes, I grind mine fresh at home and use beans from all kinds of companies from Starbucks to Intelligentsia to Red Hot Roasters. The frappuccinos were the whole reason for my visits to Starbucks, and now that I find we've grown apart, I must say buon viaggio, mio fratello.

Dragon Accident at Bowman Field

A BAC 167 Strikemaster plane that had been scheduled to perform in tomorrow's Thunder Over Louisville air show had a close call with disaster today.

The vintage fighter plane reportedly slid off the runway at Bowman Field after somehow suffering damage its landing gear while attempting to land. It wasn't immediately evident what caused the incident, but according to the Courier-Journal, their current theory is that "a gust of wind caused it to lose lift on its wings".

The plane, nicknamed "The Dragon", is part of an air-show company called Red Star & The Dragon. The show must go on, so the Red Star will fly solo without its partner, I hear.

Although there's probably no connection with the Bowman Field incident, problems with aircraft seem to be on an uptrend lately. A small plane filled with firearms and ammo intended for a gun show went down in Louisville Fairgrounds a week and a half ago.

Elsewhere in the world, Qantas Airlines has had five engine malfunction incidents in the last 16 days. Just last week, an Australian jet ended up grounded when it was realized it had somehow sustained a cracked cockpit during its previous flight. That, in turn, makes the mind wander to the recent rise in near-Earth meteoric material, and/or space junk, which may or may not have caused the fireball in the sky seen over the Midwest. (And then there's the oft-invoked alleged duck collision excuse, which sounds a lot like a Glomar Response cover story to me.)